I have worked with our local production ag sector for more than 20 years. The draconian regulations, policies hostile to agriculture, costs of energy and tax structure (death tax and property tax) are causing a building crisis in the aging of small family farmers and ranchers and the lack of/unwillingness of younger recruitments to take over the business. This bubble will burst in the next 15-20 years causing a crisis in US capacity to continue to produce commodities and no one is paying any attention to it or even seems worried about it. They ceratinly aren’t changing their policies to ease the pressure. If anything, things are getting worse.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ruralamerica/ra173/ra173e.pdf The Graying Farm Sector Legacy of Off-Farm Migration
“The graying trend among U.S. farmers is not new, but it seems to have accelerated during the 1980s and ‘90s. Older farmers are leaving the sector at slower and slower rates. One fourth of U.S. farmers and half of farm landlords are at least 65 years old. Farmers and landlords aged 65 and older own a combined one-third of farm assets. Historical
experience suggests that there will be a gradual turnover of farm assets as farm operators leave the sector at increasingly advanced ages.”
http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/news/100825aging.shtml
The graying of Oregon agriculture
“The aging of the Oregon farmer and rancher is a continuing trend. In the most recent census (2007), the average age of principal operator- the person most responsible for the day-to-day decisions and management of the farm- is at an all-time high of 57.5 years old. That is an increase from the 2002 census figure of 54.9 years old. As recently as 1982, the average age of principal operator was 50.4 years old. The data suggests there is a general graying of the Oregon agricultural producer. Nationally, the numbers show the same trend.”
http://aic.ucdavis.edu/aicnews/aicnews.htm
“One thing that hasn’t receded is the average age of farmers, both in California and nationwide. The average age of U.S. farm operators increased from 55.3 in 2002 to 57.1 in 2007, while the number of operators 75 or older grew by 20 percent since 2002, according to the census.
“In California, the average age of the farm’s principal operator in December 2007 was 58.4, up from 56.8 in 2002.”
IMO its intentional. Leftists have always done similar things to food producers.
Economic policies as a whole have pushed people to move to big cities.
A big contibutor to the aging farmer is the fact that there are fewer and fewer young farmers.
Very obvious, of course, but what’s not so obvious is that these newer, younger, farmers are producing 2, or 5, or 10 times as much food as the older farmers they are replacing.
I have a BIL who is still farming at 70, and covering the same amount of land he coverged 30 years ago, (400-500 acres)in the 80’s.
When he retires, since he doesn’t have anyone to hand it down to, it will probably be absorbed into a farm 10 or 15 times as big as his
We’re 57, we started farming when we were 19. We have bought 4 small farms over the years and had to sell one of them and have remortgaged more times than I can remember, the last time in 2009.
We’re doing better this last year and hopefully, price-wise, in the coming year but that is assuming we can get a crop and we haven’t yet put any seed into the ground.
We don’t talk about retirement, what is that? Our son works for us but there is no way he can get started on his own, he has no collateral and we can’t back him and the bank isn’t going to give him half a million on a short term loan with potential crops as collateral. Especially after what our county experienced in 2008 when a 60 MPH dry, dusty sustained wind blew for hours and literally fried most of our crops and then returned a few days later to ruin what was left.
When we started farming there were 340 family farmers in our county, there are now 18. Much of the water right has been sold to the county and city, who have been the saviors of farmers who were losing it all. A lot of the water rights sold to the gas-powered electric plant and a lot of it just sits idle growing noxious weeds.